Ukranians rally in Sydney against Putin

By Tim Barliss

19 July 2014 — 4:46pm

It started at the statue of Queen Victoria outside the QVB and ended at the bronze of Saint Mary MacKillop beside St Marys Cathedral.

Almost 100 members of Sydney’s Ukrainian community demonstrated disgust aimed principally at Russian President Vladimir Putin, with banners declaring ''G19 No Russia No Killer Putin'', ''Putin Terrorist'' and ''TerroRussian Number One''.

Young and old carried the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine – blue above for the sky and yellow below signifying what was once a great wheat nation.

After a minute’s silence, a prayer and a hymn, community leader Pete Shmigel said: “We are seeing in the Ukraine the growth of a new form of terrorism, of tyrant terrorism whereby one man for his own agrandisement, for his own political ambitions, is terrorising through the use of mercenaries an entire country and now an entire world as a result of downing an airplane of innocent people.”

Olya Kachanova, 19, on holiday in Sydney from Ukraine addressed the crowd.

She said: “We want to be independent in the Ukraine. We don’t want Russia. It is our country.”

Advertisement

Wasyla Senko, another community leader, said Mr Putin should be excluded from G20.

“They [Russia] shot it down because they thought it was Ukrainian. Three hundred people died needlessly because of one man’s ambition,” he said.

At the cathedral a wreath was laid bearing the words ‘'In memory of the victims of Flight MH17.''

There was another silence and laying of black ribbons as a sign of remembrance.

Mary MacKillop is portrayed in her statue wearing her nun’s habit. It was a poignant reminder of another Catholic nun, Sister Philomene Tiernan, a teacher at Kincoppal school, Rose Bay. She was on board flight MH17.

Father Simon Ckuj, parish priest for Ukrainian Catholics in Sydney, took a service at St Andrews in Lidcome.

"It was a message of healing, but also to allow us to grieve. As a community we are grieving," he said, adding that there were many children at the service. "They know what is going on even though their parents may try to shield them from it.

"It was aimed at the children to give them a little bit of hope that the world is not an evil place even though there are evil men in the world.

"There is a mood of horror, of outrage. Never did we expect to wake up on a Friday morning and to hear this most awful news.

''Most if our community is Australian born as I am. I feel it doubly as an Australian and as Ukrainian .